4 Aug, 2010
Interpreting I3 Scores
After announcing the 49 winning applicants for the $650 Investing in Innovation competition, the U.S. Department of Education has now put online the scores, judges’ comments, and more details about each project.
Trying to make sense of the numerical scores for the validation and development award winners is, at least for this blogger, an exercise in futility. And it’s all because of a statistical process called “standardization.”
For me, the quest to understand the i3 scoring system began with this question: Did Saint Vrain School District really have the best application of them all?
Because of the large number of applicants and judges in the validation and development categories, the department used standardization to make sure the scoring was done as fairly as possible.
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3 Aug, 2010
I’ll be appearing tongight on Wisconsin Public Television’s Here and Now, discussing the Government Accountability Board’s new rule requiring groups and persons who spend more that $ 25 on something called “political communications” during a set period preceding an election to register, make certain filings and disclose the source of their funds. Joining me will be Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
My initial take on the rule is here. Apart from a statutory issue, there a few broad constitutional problems. The first is that, although the United States Supreme Court has upheld disclosure requirements in the case of what the Court calls express advocacy, the GAB rule applies more broadly to what the Court has held to be “issue advocacy” which criticizes or supports a candidate’s record or stance on the issues. It is not clear t
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